Taskforce meeting: supporting ageing citizens with sensors, AI and data
The NSSN Ageing Taskforce gathered last week at UTS in Sydney to review the future of digital innovation in healthcare for NSW’s ageing community.
The seventh Ageing Forum Taskforce meeting discussed how to support our ageing citizens with sensors, artificial intelligence (AI) and data to augment the care workforce: an essential move if we want to help mitigate an aged care crisis.
The taskforce brings together a range of leaders across the aged care sector dedicated to the adoption of technology for better outcomes for ageing citizens, including: the NSSN, the Australian Research Council (ARC) Research Hub for Connected Sensors for Health, the Central Coast Research Institute for Integrated Care (CCRI), the Central Coast Local Health District, the University of Newcastle FASTLab, UTS and industry partners.
It follows the soft launch of the Healthy@Home program at the last Taskforce meeting in May, 2023.
Professor Paul Egglestone from the University of Newcastle FASTLab told last week’s Taskforce meeting the Healthy@Home program was about using a sensor-driven care ecosystem to enhance ageing people’s experience in their home.
“We wanted to create some sort of consortium or forum where we could together address those problems rather than individually,” Prof. Egglestone said.
(Clockwise from top left) Professor Paul Egglestone from University of Newcastle’s FASTLab; Catherine Oates Smith from NSW Smart Sensing Network, Janet McDonald AO and Helene Blanchard from My Medic Watch.
Janet McDonald AO provided an ageing citizen’s perspective of the healthcare process, saying many of her friends “don’t like to be labelled”.
“We just have to remember that everyone is an individual and everyone has different needs… we’re all very intelligent people who’ve lived a good life and we don’t want to be patronised,” Ms McDonald AO said.
The meeting heard how AI and machine learning will change healthcare for ageing citizens.
Helene Blanchard from My Medic Watch said AI and machine learning will have a positive effect on healthcare and will make the healthcare process smarter. She described the company’s technology which can predict when a person will have a fall.
“(AI) is going to change everything at a faster pace which is what we need now because the population is getting older by the minute,” Ms Blanchard said. “(AI) will enhance diagnostic accuracy, treatment plans, accelerate drug discovery…and improve patient monitoring… (including the) remote monitoring of patients at home as long as possible.”
Professor Chris White, Executive Director of SPHERE (Sydney Partnership for Health, Education, Research and Enterprise) – 15 leading organisations who are translating healthcare discoveries into practice – said the people who are treating aged care patients aren’t always involved in the solving of their issue.
“Start with the problems the community want you to solve…with good consumer engagement they will tell you the problems they want you to solve first. We’ve heard they want to stay at home,” he said.
Research priorities
NSSN MedTech Theme Leader Catherine Oates Smith said the consortium needed verifiable evidence that the sensor-driven care ecosystem approach they were taking to integrating technology into the lives of ageing people worked; that the economic modelling proved that it saved money; and the software designed to predict issues like falls could be integrated and be compliant.
Executive Director Strategy, Products and Partnerships and Chief Digital Officer at Hills Health, Andrew Pedrazzini OAM, described the organisation’s Health Digital Experience Platform which provides a consistent health service platform across all care levels in the public and private sectors.
The organisation has technology operating in more than 280 hospitals and 440 aged care facilities.
Chief Strategy Officer at United for Care (UfC), Karim Amin, described UfC’s innovative care model which uses sensor technology and Telehealth to alleviate the burden on hospitals and clinicians, and improve patient outcomes.
He said the supported independent living provider’s model could be used by hospitals to provide support for patients without acute needs.
“People hate telling their story multiple times…people want to tell their story once and be able to choose who they share it with and make sure its secure,” Mr Amin said.
Verifiable evidence
The taskforce meeting heard how the consortium was seeking verifiable evidence for the proposed sensor-driven care ecosystem through two current projects:
The Understanding Reception of Care Technology for Healthy Ageing at Home project led by Professor Jason Prior from UTS Institute of Sustainable Futures and funded by SPHERE aims to find out what ageing citizens think about the idea of technology like sensors and robots being installed in their homes to support their ageing in place.
The Meaningful Measures in the Home project led by Prof. Egglestone and partly funded by the NSSN which will identify a subset of meaningful measurements that provide a comprehensive understanding of older people’s wellbeing at home. These measurements include respiratory rate, blood pressure and heart rate and will inform personalised care models, enabling proactive interventions preventing significant events and subsequent hospital admission.
The meeting was told that a lot of data – pathology, GP and electronic medical data – was needed to predict and solve a patient’s medical issues and a future project could look at the consolidation of health data in a useful way for patients and the health system.
Heath consumer advocate Harry Iles-Mann spoke about why GP, allied health ad care worker cooperation is critical and emphasised the importance of integrating with these providers in a way that is collaborative and inclusive.
Professor White suggested a community led aged care alliance could pioneer a sustainable funding model for the sensor-driven care ecosystem.
“We could do for ageing what the Cancer Institute did for cancer,” he said.
The Taskforce also heard about other ageing research initiatives by researchers from universities in the NSSN network, including the SOUND-BITES program and the New Sensor-based Monitoring System for the Early Detection and Improved Management of Heart Failure project.
The NSSN is hosting the 3rd Ageing Forum at NSW Parliament House in Sydney in November.